Resources for Science Literacy: Professional Development

Helping teachers understand and use science literacy goals

Support
continues to grow for the science literacy goals in Project 2061’s Science
for All Americans and Benchmarks for Science Literacy and the National
Research Council’s National Science Education Standards. Yet
much remains to be done before teachers and students across the country can
reach those goals. For example, educators must themselves be literate in science,
mathematics, technology, and their interconnections. They must know
how to teach in ways that will help students understand and retain the most
important concepts. And they must be able to select curriculum materials that
meet benchmarks and standards.

The Role of Teachers in Reform
For these reforms to succeed, a new kind of professional development is needed—one
that emphasizes the role of teachers as decision makers and provides them
with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand and effectively work
toward science literacy. Even teachers who have a firm grounding in the science
content and are confident that they can work toward science literacy often
find other obstacles that impede reform. For example, they may not have access
to the most current education research, they may be unsure about how Benchmarks
relates to national standards in science and mathematics, or they may
need help in determining whether curriculum materials match specific learning
goals.

To help educators overcome these difficulties, Project 2061 has created its
first CD-ROM tool, Resources for Science Literacy: Professional Development.
The CD-ROM contains six components that can be used by higher education faculty
in planning pre-service education, by school districts in designing in-service
staff development programs, and by teachers for self-guided study of the learning
goals in Science for All Americans and Benchmarks.

A New Approach to Professional Development
With this new CD-ROM, Project 2061 introduces the first professional development
tool to be based on learning goals such as benchmarks and standards. Resources
for Science Literacy: Professional Development provides science educators
with an understanding of science literacy, what it requires of students, and
how teachers can help students achieve it. The wealth of material and information
presented on the CD-ROM can serve as the cornerstone of a long-term professional
development program that will enhance both content knowledge and teaching
craft.

Organized around the goals presented in Science for All Americans, Resources
offers a carefully selected collection of bibliographies, research findings,
comparisons of Benchmarks to national standards documents, college
course plans, and a diverse set of workshop designs that will help educators
to:

Expand their knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology content.
Without further study, few teachers can be expected to master all
of the topics in Science for All Americans and how they interconnect.
With its database of descriptions of more than 120 books for general readers
dealing with many areas of science, technology, and mathematics, the Science
Trade Books component of the CD-ROM can help teachers at all levels
fill in gaps in their content knowledge. The database can be searched
by Science for All Americans chapters and sections so that users
can compile a reading list around those topics. This component can be
used as a guide for teachers’ reading and discussion groups; as
an acquisitions aid for libraries and teacher resource centers in schools
and districts; as a source for recommended supplementary reading in undergraduate
courses; and as part of any in-service professional development program
that focuses on science content.

For higher education faculty, the College Courses component contains
descriptions and analyses of 15 undergraduate courses that attempt to
foster science literacy. Links in the descriptions direct the user to
relevant chapters and sections of Science for All Americans. The
descriptions, some of which discuss how the courses contribute to student
learning, can serve as discussion points for developers of pre-service
and in-service programs aimed at science literacy. They might also guide
teachers as they explore on their own a specific area of science, mathematics,
or technology. In addition, the set of questions used to analyze the courses
for their contribution to science literacy can be applied to other courses
and materials.

Use Benchmarks and national standards more effectively. To
help educators deal with the complex task of sorting out national, state,
and local guidelines for the various disciplines, Resources for Science
Literacy includes Comparisons of Benchmarks to National
Standards. Users can examine detailed analyses of how Benchmarks
relates to the national content recommendations for science, mathematics,
and social studies. In particular, the comparison of Benchmarks and
National Science Education Standards makes it much easier for educators
to work with both benchmarks and standards when making decisions about
curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Study difficulties students have in learning Benchmarks ideas.
To successfully teach topics from Benchmarks, educators should
know what to expect of students at various grade levels. Yet many educators
may not have access to the latest education research. Curriculum developers
and teachers can use the Cognitive Research component as a guide
to findings on how students understand and learn specific concepts that
are essential to science literacy. Benchmarks’ Chapter 15:
The Research Base and its accompanying bibliography are supplemented with
a new collection of references to articles on research findings in teacher
journals. This research literature sheds light on the ability of students
of various ages to understand many of the topics in Science for All
Americans and Benchmarks, provides rationale for the placement
of benchmarks, and identifies common preconceptions that students may
hold.

Design workshops to prepare teachers for reform. After Benchmarks
for Science Literacy was published in 1993, Project 2061 staff, teachers,
and education consultants designed a variety of workshops to help educators
consider the far-reaching implications that specific learning goals would
have for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The Project 2061
Workshop Guide component of the CD-ROM includes a general framework,
menus of options, and complete example scripts that school districts or
schools can use to design their own versions of these workshops for faculty
and staff.

The workshops focus special attention on helping educators apply benchmarks
and standards to the most immediate tasks at hand: crafting curriculum
frameworks, selecting or designing curriculum materials, and planning
instruction. Teachers can use the background materials as the basis for
the self-guided study of Project 2061 and its reform tools.

About Resources for Science Literacy
The professional development components included on the CD-ROM have been tested
and used by educators around the country. Each component can be used on its
own for a specific task or in combination with other components to accomplish
more advanced goals. For example, users could create a customized list of
recommended trade books dealing with scientific inquiry (a topic in Science
for All Americans Chapter 1: The Nature of Science); then review the specific
learning goals related to that topic in Benchmarks for Science Literacy
and the National Science Education Standards; go on to explore
the available cognitive research on student learning of concepts related to
scientific inquiry; and, finally, examine the college course syllabi for suggestions
on developing a systematic approach to learning more about the topic.

Resources for Science Literacy: Professional Development is Project
2061’s first tool to be developed primarily for an electronic medium.
Its companion print volume offers a sampling of the kinds of material included
on the CD-ROM along with directions for using the disk.